Research Guides: Using Generative AI in Research: AI Tools

Advisory Notice

AI tools can offer valuable assistance in research.However, it is crucial to avoid relying on such tools, as many models carry biases from their training data and may lead to the omission of important information. While AI can be a valuable resource, it should not replace or diminish our critical thinking skills; rather, it should serve as a supplement to enhance your workflow.

*It is advisable to verify your instructor, or school's, policy regarding the use of AI tools in your research. Remember to cite any content generated by these tools to maintain academic integrity.

Experimenting with Use of AI Tools in Research

Generating Research Ideas: Explore topics, identify trends and emerging topics; brainstorm potential research questions, and refine existing research questions. AI tools can provide insights based on your interests and existing literature.
Keyword Suggestions: AI tools can assist you in expanding your keywords and phrases and help refine your focus.
Summarizing & Synthesizing: Highlight key concepts (read the full text to understand the concept) and simplify difficult-to-understand sentences. *Mindful that important points may be missed.
Feedback & Writing Assistance: Look for improvements in grammar, structure, and readability. AI writing tools can help identify patterns in your writing.

AI Products

Generative AI for Educators
ITHAKA's Generative AI Product Tracker lists generative AI products that are either marketed specifically towards postsecondary faculty or students or appear to be actively in use by postsecondary faculty or students for teaching, learning, or research activities. The Tracker is a living document, which we update regularly as new products enter the market or new information about existing products becomes available.
Using AI When Writing for Publication
Guidance on using AI tools in papers being considered for publication

Literature & Citation Mapping Tools

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Interdisciplinary collection of journal articles, conference proceedings, and books. Look here for scholarly content from more than 22,000 peer-reviewed journals. Key features include the "Citation Network" and Journal Citation Reports (JCR) which measure research influence at the journal and disciplinary levels.

Google Scholar
One of Google’s longest-running services, Google Scholar is an academic search engine that searches across scholarly literature, including books, articles, white papers, conference proceedings, and more. Key features include "Cited by" and "Related articles." Utilize the "Advanced search" for better results.
Dimensions
Dimensions covers millions of research publications connected by more than 1.7 billion citations, supporting grants, datasets, clinical trials, patents and policy documents.
Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI.
Lens
Lens ingests, cleans, aggregates, normalizes and serves over 225+ million scholarly works, 127+ million global patent records, and more than 370+ million patent sequences, with rich metadata including the people and institutions that generate this knowledge and the linkages between them, drawn from diverse data sources.
Inciteful
Perhaps less targeted than Connected Papers, Inciteful is the faster of the two tools. Inciteful operates off of a single seed paper.
Connected Papers
Connected Papers is a unique, visual tool to help researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their field of work.
Litmaps
Litmaps shares similarity with Inciteful in that while you can jump start the search with just one seed paper (it will suggest more), it is really designed to work with more than one paper.